Common Thread
by Bardicsidhe
Summary: Likely PG-13, to be on the safe side the rating is raised for violence. A look at the effects of Otogi Ryuuji's childhood. Honda bears witness. (No Pairings. Ryuuji-centric, with Honda as filter character.)


_Is there anyone out there, 'cause it's gettin' harder and harder to breathe…_

**Title:** Common Thread  
**Rating:** R for language and persistent violence (mostly not graphic...just persistent.)  
**Pairings:** None  
**Notes:** I wrote this in reponse to several things. First – I'm working with only the anime to present available on Kids WB! and the translated manga to volume four. Hence…I needed spoiler sites about Ryuuji'd dad to write this. I wondered…every site about Ryuuji that I read points out his dad as being a 'not nice' person, but leaves it at that. Not nice to Ryuuji? So…since I'm already writing an abusive father into another story, and wasn't sure how to go about it, I wanted to see how an abusive father would affect his life.

The other reason was because this is a songfic, without the song. Maroon 5's _Harder to Breathe_ immediately made me think of a young Ryuuji hiding out from his dad, with the plea 'is there anyone out there, 'cause it's gettin' harder and harder to breathe." So…this is a response to that song. Here's to the mainstream tastes in music. Woo!

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_Ryuuji curled up against the foot of his bed, trying to make his slight form even smaller than it was, slender arms wrapped around his legs, elfin chin tucked in the little divot between his knees. Every now and again, he shivered. Maybe if he stayed absolutely quiet and still…maybe if he was very, very good…Daddy wouldn't find him._

_Deep inside, the monster stirred sluggishly and coiled itself tighter._

Honda didn't start to see the real Ryuuji until after Yugi's typical method of winning friends…whipping his ass in a duel…worked its magic and a certain small puzzle-wearing somebody asserted dominance over the ponytailed boy. And even then Ryuuji didn't let up. He defied the tentative friendship forging between the group. Yugi gave him his space reluctantly, Jou willingly, but Honda refused to be put off. What did he see in the other boy? If it had been Yugi, he would have seen the inherent good inside Ryuuji. If it had been Jonouchi, well…Otogi Ryuuji was preferably a blank spot in his mind. But it was different to Honda. Anzu would have been impressed by his charm, though with her clarity, she'd see through it soon enough. Mai would have admired him for his pure cussedness and balls-out attitude toward life – and inconsequentially, his fashion sense. Perhaps Kaiba would have noted him as a worthy adversary, or sensed a common thread between them, though the enigmatic senior Kaiba brother would most likely just dismiss him completely.

But Honda's means were much simpler, the tools with which he made his decisions far less convoluted. Ryuuji reminded him of himself. Maybe not in attitude, but in the same stubborn insistence to destroy himself one way or another.

Not long after Ryuuji had entered Domino High, he'd rubbed fur the wrong way. Not the troublemaker, not the vagrant. Too charming, too smooth, too much _competition_. Abrasive and arrogant, blunt, incisive, and when he wasn't being fawned over, he was almost always alone. He'd taken to wearing a leather jacket to match his black leather pants when he wasn't in the drag blue school uniform. The girls wanted him, and he'd taken enough girlfriends from their previous boyfriends to warrant punishment. And he hadn't stayed with any of them longer than a few days.

Honda watched him with the sick fascination of someone watching someone else slowly carving open a hole in their hand. He knew for a fact that Ryuuji was, in the popular American vernacular the kids had adopted here, "cruisin' for a bruisin'." He couldn't fathom why anyone would willingly do what Ryuuji did, but maybe it was what he wanted. So who was Honda to get in the way of that?

Naturally, he wouldn't be _Honda _if he didn't get in the way of it. So the crewcut brunette took a proprietary interest in the boy, acting on the assumption that beyond his headband and the harlequin mark on his cheek, there was an actual person. And if there wasn't, when the worst came down, Honda was bound to get a good show. He took to watching Ryuuji first, looking to him for a reaction before he looked to anyone else. Because of Jonouchi's apparent violent allergy to their new classmate, Honda and Ryuuji were thrown together more often than he'd expected, usually playing peacemaker or at worst ends, restraining device for his blond best friend. But then it was frustrating – Ryuuji gave away nothing. He was catty and clever, snatching up every opening that honest, thoughtless Jou unwittingly handed him and turning them back on the blonde in jibes that stung even hours later.

Most of the guys as tall as Otogi Ryuuji were falling all over themselves by now, clumsy asses. All legs and no idea how to movie. Well, Ryuuji learned long ago that the fastest way to attract attention was to be clumsy. Wolves looked for the first misstep to decide which caribou to pull down. Unlike his counterparts, the raven-haired boy moved with a jaguar's grace, padding deliberately, hips following his stride, striking a rhythm of his own. Green eyes the exact shade and narrow slant of a cat's squeezed irritably at the world, weighed and found wanting as it was by their owner.

It was purely by accident when Honda witnessed the _real _Ryuuji. Released late from school for some transgression that, per usual, he'd taken the heat for to save Jonouchi, he bounded down the chipped concrete front stairway in time to see Ryuuji disappearing around the corner of the chain link fence surrounding the schoolyard. He was lost in a mask of trees, and curiosity piqued, Honda followed.

Ryuuji skirted the schoolyard, moving down toward the frayed-end development a few blocks away, crossing a four-way intersection to where the viaduct crossed an open portion of the storm sewer. The intersecting street closest to Honda ran parallel to the sewer, and between that street and the opposite side of the open channel, cut off from the public by low chain link fences, the walls slanted down at a sharp incline to the flat bottom where dark water sparkled. Ladders made crudely from extra iron rebar ran up the sides of the incline at intervals, and narrow maintenance walkways ran down its length inside the fence.

Ryuuji leaned back against the railing there, and pulled a flattened cigarette pack from a back pocket. Staying on the other side of the street out of sight in the shade of a rusted fire escape, Honda watched him go through the motions, peeling the cellophane back, tapping the carton until a buff-ended cigarette peeked out. Ryuuji returned the pack to wherever it had come from and retrieved a lighter in its place. It was late in the day, and the lick of flame from the lighter illuminated the dark-haired boy's pale face. He tipped his head to light one end with the other clamped at his lips. Ryuuji took a long drag, and returned to his flaccid pose against the railing, cigarette pinned between his fingers.

It occurred to Honda that Ryuuji was waiting for someone. He mentally '_geezed_' at himself for snooping around in the shadows like a stalker and turned, intending to slip silently back the way he'd come, when motion from down the street past Ryuuji caught his attention and he turned back. Three boys, still in their school uniforms – _Those aren't our colors_ – moved down the street toward Ryuuji with the same rhythmic aggressive self-assurance as the ponytailed boy. Ryuuji made a brilliant blue smear against their broad-shouldered charcoal gray as they surrounded him. Honda decided to stay right where he was.

_Maybe Daddy wouldn't find him this time. He couldn't do anything right, and Daddy was always so angry with him. He was a bad boy. He deserved it, because he couldn't do what Daddy wanted. But he didn't want Daddy to find him, all the same._

_The monster raised its head, slowly, blinking at its adversaries with deceptively lazy green eyes. A low snarl back built in its chest._

There was a silent exchange of words, growing tenser and more animated as the moments ticked past. Ryuuji never dropped his cool exterior, but from the back, Honda could see his shoulders slowly tightening underneath the fabric of his jacket. He took another hit from his cigarette, and dropped it to the sidewalk, crushing it beneath the toe of his boot as his face trained on the largest of the three boys – the leader, Honda assessed immediately by the exchange of body language. One of the flanking youths opened his jacket and tugged his tie loose, and Honda caught the flash of red. Ryuuji caught it too, gaze snapping toward the boy as violently as a cornered wolf. The leader's lips parted, flapping around a superior smirk.

Only vaguely, Honda perceived that the last word from the boy's mouth had looked like 'daddy.'

He lunged forward, but not fast enough. The entire scene exploded in front of him. Ryuuji bent his knees and threw himself at the largest of the three boys, but he was outnumbered and knew it, and slammed his boot heel down on the leader's instep when he ducked under his arm and spun around. He was smiling. It was a chilling smile, like the upward tilt of a dog's mouth, nose ridged in rage and fangs bared. The two flanking toughs came at him as one, and he ripped into them with a casual ruthless glee.

_When he was old enough, he was going to show Daddy that he could do things right. And then he was going to get Daddy back for everything he'd done. He promised._

_The monster opened its massive jaws and roared._

Honda's shoes mired in tar. Someone had the back of his collar. His lungs exploded in fire at the force of his sprint, but it just didn't seem fast enough. Ryuuji had a frightening amount of skill, fists and feet both, but the leader of the little band of bullies had recovered now, and joined his friends as they tore at Ryuuji in turn, until the dark ponytail whipped out in a dead run as he tried to evade them. But they would catch him in moments, and he saw this, and threw himself instead over the fence and down the rocky incline along the side of the viaduct.

Terror gripped Honda, until he remembered that it had been a dry summer, and in late August, there was only an inch or two of water in the storm sewer. Instead of trying to follow them, he got to the embankment opposite them, running parallel to the street intersecting the viaduct, and clambered over the fence, grunting in pain as the sharp chain links at the top ripped his sleeve open and drew a long scratch down his arm. There was no footing here, and skree slid from underneath his shoes and his backside as he slid down into the water below.

The splash was enough to surprise the four already locked in battle, and when Honda made it to his feet, splattered from the slurry water, he caught Ryuuji looking at him from between the other boys. The green eyes were narrowed, and they widened a touch at him.

_What? Who was that? _

_The monster abated short of madness and recoiled, waiting, green eyes glowing._

Snarling, the boys stared at Honda, and one of the leader's lieutenants started for him after a few seconds of shocked silence. Ryuuji whiffed a punch at the leader's face, more to draw his attention back then as an actual move, and the fight resumed. The brunette waited for his opponent to strike at him, and ducked at the last moment, dodging and spinning to whack an elbow into the back of the other guy's head and slam him into the concrete wall of the viaduct Honda had just slid down. There was a sickening thud as the boy's skull connected, and he slid down the rough texture of the incline to the shallow water as it slid around his form. Teeth gritted, Honda splashed across the narrow channel to bulldoze into the nearest thug. It happened to be the leader.

He didn't register the impact that stopped him in his tracks until a split second afterward.

Pain and nausea shot streamers outward from the fist driven into his midsection.

He staggered back, realizing with a shock almost worse than the pain that the fist had been Ryuuji's. The darker boy glared at him.

"Mine." He growled.

Honda hit his knees and clutched his stomach.

The leader had gotten behind Ryuuji in his distraction, and raised both fists together over the slender boy's head.

Honda, choked with the bile that welled up in the back of his throat, could only stare in horror and try to force an alarm from his airless lungs.

Ryuuji unexpectedly spun as though he'd already known the boy was there, and swung a fist into his exposed belly. A sweeping kick into his opponent's knee settled the matter, and he hit the ground beside Honda with a tremendous splash.

The third boy was nowhere to be seen. Ryuuji's gaze cast wildly in either direction, and caught him scrambling up one of the maintenance ladders to the walkway and the fence above. He started after him with a low snarl.

Only to hit his face in the murky water when Honda swept out a leg and tripped him. Ryuuji picked himself up, coughing up a mouthful of filth, and shot the brunette a shocked grimace. "The _fuck_?!"

"C'mon, Otogi, let him go," Honda wheezed. The water was cold, and the light was failing, and he wanted nothing more than to go home and get his lecture and his grounding, take a hot shower and go to bed. "What the hell did they do?"

"Nothing." It sounded honest, but Honda couldn't believe it.

"You're shitting. What did they do?"

"I'm not. They wanted a fight, so I gave them one."

Honda looked up at the other's face then, and saw the twist of his expression. Ryuuji sat on his knees, touching ginger fingertips to the side of his own temple and blinking at the red that came away. He looked pleased, jaw tightening, raising a touch, before the entire mask melted away into macabre horror. Ryuuji turned his face away, then. He got to his feet, slowly, wincing at a few hurts just beginning to ache, and waded toward the ladder out of the viaduct.

Honda followed him.

He stopped and looked over his shoulder as he dug out his cigarette pack. It was drenched, inside and out. He gave it a disgusted look and threw it into the water. "Is there something I can do for you?"

The color of his swelling, broken lip and the bruise slowly purpling on his cheek stood out shockingly against the pall of his face.

Honda reached out, hand sponging on the soaked jacket hanging on the other's thin shoulders. "I don't live too far from here. C'mon."

Ryuuji gave him a disbelieving frown, but shrugged. "Sure." He clambered up the ladder, and Honda followed him. They left the other boys where they lay. It was a hard city, after all.

__


End file.
